The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between

Sanford Budick, Wolfgang Iser

Stanford University Press, 1996 - Comparative literature - 348 pages

Translation between any two languages sets in motion a tug-of-war around those aspects of each language that are least accessible to agreed-upon equivalents, around those aspects of expression and understanding that are unique to a given culture. This struggle - between possession and dispossession, or between reinscription and obliteration - is necessarily perilous for the culture that has less power to retain the usages of its language. Since translation wields powerful forces of cultural change, it is an arena both of the global coercions of national cultures and of the local dominations of everyday others by everyday selves. Thus the ethics of translation are both the ethics of cross-cultural discourse and the unit problem of ethical discourse itself.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between; Irvine studies in the humanities
• Editors: Sanford Budick, Wolfgang Iser
• Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0804725101, 9780804725101
• Length: 348 pages